Kant's Philosophical RevolutionA Short Guide to the Critique of Pure ReasonYirmiyahu Yovel

A short, clear, and authoritative guide to one of the most important and difficult works of modern philosophy

Perhaps the most influential work of modern philosophy, Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is also one of the hardest to read, since it brims with complex arguments, difficult ideas, and tortuous sentences. A philosophical revolutionary, Kant had to invent a language to express his new ideas, and he wrote quickly. It's little wonder that the Critique was misunderstood from the start, or that Kant was compelled to revise it in a second edition, or that it still presents great challenges to the reader. In this short, accessible book, eminent philosopher and Kant expert Yirmiyahu Yovel helps readers find their way through the web of Kant's classic by providing a clear and authoritative summary of the entire work. The distillation of decades of studying and teaching Kant, Yovel's "systematic explication" untangles the ideas and arguments of the Critique in the order in which Kant presents them. This guide provides helpful explanations of difficult issues such as the difference between general and transcendental logic, the variants of Transcendental Deduction, and the constitutive role of the "I think." Yovel underscores the central importance of Kant's insistence on the finitude of reason and succinctly describes how the Critique's key ideas are related to Kant's other writings. The result is an invaluable guide for philosophers and students.

Yirmiyahu Yovel is professor emeritus of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was previously the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research. His books include Kant and the Philosophy of History and Spinoza and Other Heretics (both Princeton).

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Endorsements

"The task of an introduction to Kant's critical project is clarity, and this book compares very well with others in that regard. Yovel is a serious Kant scholar who has transformed decades of teaching into a concise expression of the philosopher's views."--John Callanan, King's College London

"Very few short introductions to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason are this clear and well informed, and very few Kant scholars can compete with Yovel's broad knowledge of the philosopher. This book is distinguished from other introductions and greatly enriched by the way it highlights important connections between the Critique and Kant's other writings. Offering helpful explanations of some of Kant's most baffling doctrines, Yovel's book will serve as a useful guide for those reading Kant's text for the first (or second or third) time."--Sally S. Sedgwick, University of Illinois at Chicago

Table of Contents

Preface ixPart 1 Preliminary Observations: Rethinking The Object 1
The Foundations of the Sciences 3
The Critique as Self-Consciousness and as an Act of Autonomy 4
Finite Rational Beings 7
No Intellectual Intuition 7
Skepticism and Dogmatism 10
The Interests of Reason and Its History 15
Part 2 Following Kant’s Argument 21
The Introduction 21
On the Structure of the Book 28
Space and Time as Forms of Intuition: The Transcendental Aesthetics 29
The Direct (“Metaphysical”) Explication 31
The Indirect (Regressive or “Transcendental”) Explication 33
The Transcendental Logic: The Categories as the Foundations of Objects 36
Analytic and Dialectic 37
The Analytic of Concepts 38
The Metaphysical Deduction and the Discovery of the Categories: What Are the Facts of Reason? 39
Synthesis as Judgment 41
The Transcendental Deduction: Validating the Categories 45
The Regressive Argument 47
The Conditions of Possibility
of Nonscientific Experience 51
The Deduction in Edition A: The Hierarchy of Syntheses 52
The Progressive Argument 55
Schematic Presentation 62
Schematism 67
The Analytic of Transcendental Principles: The “Pure Science of Nature” 70
Logical and Empirical Necessity 78
The Object as Phenomenon and the Enigmatic Transcendental X 79
The Refutation of Idealism 82
In What Sense Is the Transcendental Logic Considered a Critical Metaphysics? 84
Phenomena and Noumena 86
The Transcendental Dialectic 88
The Unconditioned as Totality 88
The Ideas of Reason 89
The Immortality of the Soul: The Paralogisms 91
The Antinomies: The World as Totality 92
God’s Existence 95
The Regulative Idea 101
Metaphysical Tension and Self-Knowledge 103
Select Bibliography 105
Index 107